The Arab_Israeli Conflict
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Robust Liberal Internationalism and “Critical Friendship” with Israel
Roots and Grand Strategy
Among liberals and Democrats, adherents of robust liberal internationalism stand out as being both the most willing to use force – though they are less hawkish than the Republican mainstream – and the most supportive of Israel, while being critical of illiberal Israeli policies. There are two subgroups within this approach: liberal interventionists, and centrist Democrats.11
For liberal interventionists, radical antidemocratic regimes are viewed as implacable enemies that must be confronted because of their ideological nature. This outlook was forged in the fight against Fascism and Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s. It was dominant in the Democratic Party and anti-Communist elements of the labor movement from the early days of the Cold War until Vietnam. Leading adherents included Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson. They supported labor rights, the New Deal, and civil rights at home, while simultaneously supporting liberal international institutions and foreign aid, combined with a tough policy of containment toward the Soviet Union abroad. The purpose of foreign aid, such as the Marshall Plan, was to limit the popularity of Communism by demonstrating that democracy would improve the material condition of ordinary people.12 The Vietnam War led to the decline of these liberal hawks within the Democratic Party, and some left the party altogether in the late 1970s.
Another strand of liberal interventionism stems from liberal intellectuals associated with the magazine Dissent, founded by Irving Howe in 1954. Howe abandoned his former Trotskyite compatriots over their opposition to entering World War II, and he was extremely critical of the New Left. He emphasized the moral distinction between totalitarian regimes on the one hand and democracies – however imperfect – on the other. Howe died in 1993; nonetheless, many people associated with the magazine continue to adhere to his approach, such as Michael Walzer and Paul Berman.
Alongside liberal interventionists are the centrist Democrats. They share a commitment to a domestic liberal agenda and anti-totalitarianism; however, their approach to foreign policy is tempered by political realism. Thus, centrist Democrat Dennis Ross – who became the most important U.S. official dealing with the Middle East peace process in the 1990s – was more cautious about the ability of U.S. intervention to impose democracy than neoconservatives.13 Bill Clinton summed up the centrist foreign policy creed thus: “When our national security interests are threatened, we will act with others when we can, but alone if we must. We will use diplomacy when we can, but force if we must.”14 In the 1980s the centrist approach regained some traction inside the Democratic Party with the rise of the New Democrats, such as Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, who were more willing to support Reagan’s interventionist policies in Central America than most Democrats.15 The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and the New Republic magazine, which was influential in Washington circles during the 1980s, also promoted this outlook. Bill Clinton served as president of the DLC, and its centrist approach played an important role during the Clinton presidency.
Post–Cold War
Supporters of robust liberal internationalism constituted the minority of Democratic congressmen who supported the 1991 Gulf War; which Dissent editor Michael Walzer defined as a “just war.” They also led the campaign for humanitarian intervention to save Bosnian Muslims. Their support for the use of force stood out even more starkly regarding the 2003 Iraq War. For Paul Berman at Dissent, the key reason to support the war was the fascist nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime and its massive crimes against its own people. Senators Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, as well as Richard Holbrooke, also supported the war, though they argued for a more multilateral approach than that adopted by the Bush administration, with greater emphasis on postwar institution building.16 Much as after Vietnam, the Iraq War led to a decline in support for the robust approach among Democrats, as it became tainted by both the situation in Iraq and its association with the major policy of the conservative Bush administration.
America, Israel, and the Middle East
Adherents of robust liberal internationalism recognize that the Arab-Israeli conflict is one of many sources of instability in the Middle East, but they believe that even if Israel did not exist, the region would remain very unstable and anti-American.17 Instead, they put forward a number of different reasons for regional instability, all of which are primarily related to the internal dynamics of the region.
First, they argue that instability and anti-Americanism is driven by extreme Islamist theologies and radical Arabist ideologies that fuel terrorism and dictatorship.18 This is especially important for liberal interventionists, who view such ideologies as essentially pathological, which, they argue, makes political accommodation impossible.19 From this perspective, Israel warrants support as a democracy in the frontline of an ideological battle. Centrists’ greater political realism means that they are more willing to engage diplomatically with radical states. They believe that a mixture of carrots and sticks can affect such states’ calculations, especially those related to regime survival. Yet ultimately, they agree that such extremism, as embodied in Hamas and Hezbollah, cannot be accommodated in a strategic sense. Hence they preferred to build up Palestinian moderates like Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, rather than an unreconstructed Hamas. More generally, in line with the logic of Marshall aid, this approach argues that the U.S. should support liberals in Arab and Muslim countries through the provision of aid and development assistance to compete with the Islamists, who often gain support through charitable good works. The importance of ideology is also reflected in their belief that it is unlikely that the U.S. will be able to deter a nuclear Iran under the ayatollahs’ regime.20
Indeed, robust liberal internationalists – especially the centrists – have viewed the threat posed by Iran’s potential possession of WMD as of vital strategic importance, because of the dependence of the global economy on Middle Eastern oil. Moreover, they fear that allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons would be a tipping point that would lead to a dangerous proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region. This would signal the death knoll of the nonproliferation regime while simultaneously boosting the prestige of radical Islam. Against this background, Israel has been perceived as a strategic asset, as it is the strongest and most reliable U.S. ally in the region.21 Finally, they argue that excessive state interference in the economy, the lack of a self-critical educational culture, and the lack of good governance are significant causes of instability in the Middle East22 – hence their support of economic, social, and political reform.
The Peace Process
Robust liberal internationalists value a two-state solution in and of itself, as an expression of the universal value of national self-determination. They also think that the peace process assists in managing the conflict by preventing the development of a dangerous vacuum. Yet while they strongly favor heavy U.S. engagement in the peace process, they oppose the idea that the United States should seek to impose a settlement, since the successful implementation of any peace agreement is primarily dependent on the parties themselves. Without their willingness, an imposed deal would be likely to unravel quickly with dire consequences. As a result, they tend to focus on providing incentives for peace rather than pressure. In this connection, aid to Israel is designed not only to strengthen an ally against common enemies, but also to reassure Israel and thereby encourage it to take the risks required to make peace.23
Consequently, when an Israeli government was seriously committed to making compromises, Centrists tended to promote the idea that the US should coordinate its strategy toward the peace process with Israel more closely than with America’s Arab partners. For the key to successful U.S. mediation was deemed to be not neutrality per se but having leverage over the parties and recognizing that the key to reaching an agreement was to meet the needs of both sides.24 According to David Makovsky, in the Israeli-Palestinian case, the core needs were deemed to be security for the
Israelis and dignity for the Palestinians.25
Given their belief that peace ultimately depends on the parties themselves, they were willing to actively support attempts to reach a comprehensive peace settlement when they perceived that both sides were genuinely committed to that objective. But they were not always convinced that there was a genuine Arab-Palestinian partner able and willing to deliver a permanent status peace agreement.26 As a consequence, and especially after the failure of the Clinton administration to achieve permanent status agreement, they preferred to focus on partial agreements.27 For example, during the Obama administration David Makovsky and Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank28 put forward the idea that the U.S. should promote a deal on borders and security first rather than focus on a comprehensive settlement.29 Equally, the bad experience of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in terms of corruption and terrorism led robust liberal internationalists to promote internal Palestinian bottom-up institutional reform and economic development alongside traditional top-down diplomacy in the 2000s. Part of the purpose of this aid was to help moderate Palestinians at the expense of Hamas.
Critical Friendship with Israel
Robust liberal internationalists are united by sharing a critical commitment to a democratic Israel.30 While underlyingly supportive of Israel, they criticized Israeli policies regarding settlements, the treatment of the Palestinians, Israel’s Arab citizens, and issues related to religion and state.31 Though completely rejecting the idea that Israel is an apartheid state,32 they feared that the expansion of settlements would prevent a future Israeli withdrawal, thereby forestalling the chance for peace and threatening to turn Israel into an apartheid state in which a Jewish minority with full political rights rules over a Palestinian majority without those rights indefinitely.33 This was a central theme in their thinking. But they were also strongly critical of Leftists who reject a Jewish state per se and advocate boycotting Israel.34
Dovish Democrats: ‘Evenhandedness’ and Linkage
Identity and Roots
From 1968 onward Democrats and liberals became divided about the level of military assertiveness appropriate for American foreign policy, with the majority increasingly adopting a defensive, dovish line. These dovish liberals remained supportive of foreign engagement in terms of trade, diplomacy, and the promotion of human rights, but they became very cautious about extending military commitments and the extensive use of force. Thus, during the 1980s most Democrats opposed American intervention in Central America, and in 1991 most Democrats in Congress opposed the Gulf War. This tendency retreated somewhat in the 1990s, but following the 2003 Iraq War, dovishness rose sharply among Democrats, becoming dominant inside the party.35
Supporters of this approach include Howard Dean, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. It has also been represented inside left-of-center think tanks like the Center for American Progress, as well as within the Obama administration. Aside from dovish liberals, this cautious defensive approach to the use of force was supported by Realists within the Democratic Party, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor during the Carter administration, and later on by Realist Republicans who served in the Obama administrations, such as Robert Gates (who worked for Brzezinski during the Carter administration) and Chuck Hagel.36
Grand Strategy
Dovish Democrats tend to believe that the best way to handle conflict is to deal with its root causes by addressing legitimate grievances. This faith in rationality leads them to evaluate hostile ideologies as less strategically significant than robust liberal internationalists. Democratic doves believe that the use of force should be a last resort. They emphasize the importance of “soft power” – cultural appeal. And they tend to advocate treating countries equally, regardless of their internal ideological character, through open inclusive multilateral diplomacy, trade and economic interdependence, and membership in international institutions. This they believe will encourage those countries in the long term to become more democratic, cooperative and peaceful.37
For dovish Democrats, the Vietnam War holds important lessons for U.S. foreign policy. As they see it, U.S. policy in Vietnam was driven by misplaced idealism, a failure to recognize the limited strategic utility of military force, and a failure to understand that North Vietnam was driven primarily by local nationalism rather than by a commitment to world revolution and Communism. It was these misconceptions that led to America getting bogged down in a war it could never win. For dovish Democrats, the George W. Bush administration repeated these mistakes in Iraq.38
Post-Cold War, 9/11, and the War on Terror
According to dovish Democrats, the U.S. faces a diffuse array of threats and challenges including WMD proliferation, jihadist terrorism, and the rise of China, as well as global warming, health pandemics, and energy scarcity.39 They are at least as worried about economic and humanitarian threats as about military ones.40 The way to deal with these threats is said to be by strengthening the liberal-internationalist order founded by the U.S. after 1945. They believe that by binding itself to international norms and institutions, U.S. leadership will be more readily accepted. As they see it, expanding the reach of international institutions to deal with issues of development and unconventional security threats (such as public health, refugees, and emergency aid) is akin to investing in social services and education in the domestic arena – it all helps make for a more stable, safe, and better functioning community.41
From their perspective, 9/11 required a tough U.S. response against al Qaida and the Taliban. But they did not view the U.S. as facing a major geostrategic threat from radical Islam in the way that it had from Nazi Germany and its Fascist allies or from the Soviet Union. This is not only because radical Islam lacks the equivalent military power, but also because they do not view Islamism as having a unified revolutionary agenda.42 According to this view, unlike al Qaida, most Islamists are focused on gaining control of existing nation-states, not bringing about a return to the caliphate. Rather, they see the Middle East as containing a series of discreet conflicts driven primarily by specific local issues. Hence, they favor engaging “moderate” Islamists, placating them with local political compromises and co-opting them against al Qaida.43 They also reject a predominantly military approach as futile, since they believe it only fuels public support for al Qaida.44 Against this background, they believed that the 2003 Iraq War increased the threat from jihadis because it divided the U.S. from key allies in Europe damaging the multilateral liberal international order,45 while greatly increasing America’s unpopularity with the Arab public.46 America’s Iraq intervention was seen as having produced a backlash, similar to that produced by U.S. intervention in Vietnam. To combat this required not only withdrawing from Iraq, but also making resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict a priority.47
Israel and the Palestinians
There are four distinctive features of the dovish Democrats’ approach. First is its embrace of the concept of “linkage,” according to which resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is viewed as the key to resolving or at least greatly ameliorating all other major sources of instability and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. From this perspective, Israel is often perceived as a strategic liability. It might help the United States here and there with intelligence cooperation and antiterror tactics, but in the absence of a peace deal that would satisfy the legitimate demands of the Palestinians, American support for Israel is viewed as a major cause of hostility to the U.S., exploited by radical Islamists to gain wider support. Only by addressing the Palestinians’ grievances would support for terrorism diminish and America’s position improve.48 As Daniel Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky put it, “A just and comprehensive peace is one of the strongest arguments against Islamic militancy in the Arab world.”49 Or as Bill Clinton’s national security advisor, Sandy Berger, wrote in 2012, “There is perhaps no more intractable, yet vital, issue in U.S. foreign policy … None of these chall
enges [the threat of a nuclear Iran, the Syrian civil war, the rise of China] means that Israeli-Palestinian peace is less important now. Indeed, it is more important.”50
While many dovish Democrats identify more with Israel than with the Palestinians, others are more ideologically and emotionally neutral. Either way, the second distinctive feature of the dovish approach is that when it comes to U.S. policy, they advocate an evenhanded approach to the conflict. They argue that the U.S. should encourage Israel to make compromises through the offer of aid and security cooperation.51 But support for such carrots is tied to the prospect of Israeli withdrawal, not wider U.S. strategic interests; after all, as one Middle East expert from a liberal think tank put it, “why should the U.S. continue to subsidize the occupation?”52 Moreover, they are more willing to put heavier pressure on Israel to promote a permanent status agreement than robust liberal internationalists.53 Indeed, the third distinctive element of the dovish approach is the belief that the U.S. should vigorously promote its own outline for a comprehensive settlement,54 preferably in coordination with European allies.55
Fourth, while dovish Democrats support reforms in the Palestinian Authority, they do not imbue those reforms with the same degree of significance as do robust liberal internationalists. As a Center for American Progress report put it: “For all of the institutional problems and corruption of the Palestinian Authority, the core of the problem remains the Israeli occupation.”56 Against this background, after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, some supported engaging the organization or at least including it in a Palestinian national unity government that would empower the moderate PA leader Abbas to negotiate with Israel. They feared that without Palestinian unity, no deal would be possible. Some argued that Hamas would go along with this, because they viewed Hamas as being primarily driven by local nationalist considerations, rather than implacable, transnational religious extremism.57